


Masque of the Red Death

by bellatemple



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Gen, Halloween, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-02
Updated: 2011-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellatemple/pseuds/bellatemple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zombies and ghosts and Dali, oh my.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Masque of the Red Death

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the hoodie_time Halloween/Autumn themed h/c comment fic meme on LiveJournal, prompt by roque_clasique is too long to quote.

"Dude." Ben looks up when Dean limps his way into the living room, then looks back down at his "uncle" lying prone on the couch. "Mom's going to kill you when she sees you don't have a costume."

Dean rolls his eyes and sinks down into the arm chair, propping his crutches up on the arm and easing his bad leg onto the ottoman. "I dressed up as a homicidal maniac," he says, totally deadpan. "They look just like everybody else."

Ben dips his brush into a jar of grey face paint and snorts. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." The tip of his tongue peeks out from between his lips as he leans in close to edge the eerily realistic bullet hole he's plastered to Sam's forehead. Dean can't see Sam's expression, but it's impossible to miss the way his stomach twitches with barely contained snickers.

Dean rubs his hand across his face and swallows the "oh god, I'm old" pang that rises up when he realizes that Ben's never seen that movie.

Maybe he can talk Lisa into letting him stay home so he can fix that.

"You guys just about ready?" Lisa swings in, hips swaying, light on her feet in a way that Dean hasn't been able to be since his knee was crushed by an angelicly powered rogue piano in the final days of the apocalypse-that-wasn't. Just watching her makes his mouth and his eyes water, and he'd look away except that --

"I cannot believe you're wearing that."

Lisa strikes a pose in the doorway, showing off the tight fitting black suit that somehow does absolutely nothing for her breasts. Her hair is pulled back into a wild, messy ponytail, and she's got some kind of false mustache on, waxed and curled until the tips of it fall in line with the outside edges of her eyes. She's way over done the eyebrow pencil, and when she sees him staring, she raises her chin and stares right back, eyes held wide, wide open. Ben snickers again and steps back, pronouncing Sam "all done", and Sam pushes himself slowly upright, fingering the skin around the very edge of the latex hole.

"Dali," Sam says, like that means a goddamn thing. "Nice."

Lisa grins at him, and Dean feels like he's missed the freaking joke. He scowls.

"The Persistence of Memory?" Lisa says, tilting her head at him. Dean wants to bang his head into a wall. Lisa reaches out and ruffles at his hair. "I'll tell you about it later." She pulls her hand back and looks him over. "Where's your costume?"

Dean groans for, like, the fifty-thousandth time that night, and reaches behind himself to pull out the folded sheet he'd tucked into his pants under his jacket for safe keeping. "I'll put it on when we get there." And now all three of them are staring at him again. He resists the urge to shrink back into the chair. "What?"

Lisa presses her hand to her forehead. "Just tell me that's not one of my good sheets," she says.

Dean wonders how he's supposed to know which ones are her good sheets. It's not one he's ever seen her use on their bed. That has to count for something, right?

"Ghosts," says Ben, voice heavy with adolescent self-importance, "are supposed to be white."

Dean looks at the sheet in his hand, then back at Ben. "Have you ever seen a ghost?"

Ben colors faintly. "No."

"Then shut up." He holds out a hand when Sam gets up off the couch. Sam takes it and pulls Dean to his feet in a single, smooth gesture. Lisa stands at the ready with the crutches, but when Dean reaches for them, she holds them away.

"Nuh-uh," she says. "Let's see it, first."

Dean groans. "Dude, Sid's waiting --"

"Costume, Dean."

Dean sighs, then shakes out the sheet and pulls it over his head. It takes a few moments to get it situated properly. Lisa watches with a skeptical tilt of one heavy eyebrow. Sam has his face turned away too far for Dean to see, but he'd recognize the lift of that shoulder anywhere.

"I'm definitely pretending I'm not related to you," he says.

"Are you sure you don't want me to make you a zombie, like Sam?" Ben calls. Dean turns his head to look at the kid, which turns out to be slightly more of an effort than he'd anticipated, as the sheet doesn't move smoothly with him, and the eye holes end up off center.

"Who the hell ever heard of a zombie on crutches?" he asks. His face goes warm and damp as soon as he speaks. His breath smells like stale smoke and onions. Right. He forgot to cut a mouth hole. That . . . might be a little problematic.

"Yeah," Sam says, lifting the edge of the sheet so Lisa can pass the crutches underneath. "Because everyone knows all about the ghost in red paisley."

*

The party's an unmitigated disaster, just as Dean knew it would be. Oh, everyone loves Lisa's mustache and Sam's bullet hole -- and makes sure to tell Ben that when he and his crew show up to trick-or-treat early on in the evening, though none of them seem to know what to make of Ben's trench coat with wings attached to the back. They even go all head over heels for Sid's outfit, and he shows up in drag. Everyone gives Dean the red paisley ghost a wide berth, though, and Dean's positive it isn't just because he keeps knocking into things and getting his crutches caught on the edges of the sheet. Maryanne and her partner Julia, the resident hip young things of the neighborhood, say they're cool with it, but then he finds out it's because they think he's being ironic, and he has to leave the conversation once they get started on the "societal norms" of Halloween.

What do they know? They're both here in suits and cat ears. What the hell is a "tuxedo cat", anyway?

It isn't long before Dean finds himself out on Tom and Nancy's back porch, sheet pulled all askew so he can get a cigarette to his lips and be properly anti-social. He never should have let Lisa talk him into coming. He should have stayed home and handed out candy. But, no, Lisa swears up and down that he has to get out of the house and hang out with the neighbors, and Tom and Nancy's Halloween party is apparently the neighborhood's social event of the year. Costumes mandatory.

Dean doesn't do costumes. He'd stopped playing dress up the moment he retired the shotgun and holy water.

The door behind him slides open, and he hears footsteps approaching. He doesn't bother turning around -- the steps are far to heavy for either Lisa or Sam, and at the moment, they're the only two people he can handle talking to. Whoever it is doesn't get the sheet-and-smoke hint, though, and steps up to lean against the railing next to him. Something cold, hard, and beer bottle shaped presses against his shoulder through the sheet.

"Thought you might need this."

Sid. Dean's suddenly glad he can't see a goddamn thing right now. Sid makes for one fugly woman.

"Can't," he grunts. "Just had to take some meds." His knee is killing him. Wherever he next sits down is likely to be where he ends up staying for the night.

Sid hisses softly in sympathy. "Sorry, man."

They stand there silently for a few more moments. Dean tries to blow smoke rings, and has no idea how well he might be succeeding.

"So," Sid says finally. "A sheet."

"Shut up."

The door slides open and closed again behind them, sending out a brief blast of loud party chatter and a measure of "Dead Man's Party". "I told him he should have gone as Tiny Tim," Sam says. Sid laughs.

"Yeah," says Dean, turning his head to exhale smoke at Sam as he feels him come up on his other side. "That's because you're a jackass."

"Seriously though," Sid says. "You totally could have owned this."

"You're freaking kidding me." Dean tastes burnt filter and gropes around for something to use as an ashtray. Sam swears and grabs his sheet covered wrist, then plucks the butt from his hand, muttering something about how lucky Dean is he hasn't set himself on fire.

"No," Sid's saying. "I mean, yeah, crutches are hard to work around, but you could have made it work for you. Go as . . . a decorated vet or something."

I am a vet, Dean doesn't say. For a war with no medals. "Or Tiny Tim," he does say.

"Or," Sid continues, "John Watson or Jimmy Vulmer or something."

Dean groans. "Whatever. I would have been That Guy on the Crutches. Just like I am at every other party."

Sam bumps his shoulder into Dean's silently, drawing a faint smile from Dean. Sid sighs and pushes away from the railing.

"No one really sees them any more," he says, and then the door opens and shuts and Dean and Sam are alone.

"Know-it-all," Dean mutters.

"Dude," says Sam. "That guy's like, your best friend."

"Doesn't mean he's not a know-it-all," Dean says.

"No," Sam says. "But he's also right." His hand comes down on Dean's shoulder again, and then he steps away, and Dean's left alone with his cigarettes and bum knee.

*

Ben's conked out in a sugar coma by the time they get home, his trenchcoat pulled half up over his head, his now-battered angel wings making odd shapes out of his blankets. Dean checks in on him, no longer shrouded and feeling more normal than he has the entire day, then shuffles down the hallway to the room he shares with Lisa. She's changed out of her costume, dressed in a camisole and a pair of his old boxers, sitting crosslegged on the bed with the red paisley sheet tucked into her lap. She looks up as he comes in and tilts her face up for a kiss. Her mouth is faintly sticky, and tastes of rum and the glue she used for her mustache. He swings himself carefully into the bed and sinks down, feeling muscles all over his body slowly unravel from their tensed, ready positions. She holds up a corner of the sheet.

"These are totally ruined," she says.

"I kind of figured." Cutting eye holes would do that.

"They were my grandmother's," she says, and he flinches, the movement sending a shock of pain up and down his bad leg. She sets the sheet aside and stretches out along side him, careful of his leg. She puts her palm in the middle of his chest and they stay there a moment, Dean staring at the ceiling, waiting for yet another lecture about how he's avoiding making peace with his injury, about how he won't let himself relax and have fun, about how hard she's trying to make him feel at home, here. Then she pushes herself up on her elbow and kisses him again. "I hated them," she says.

Dean barks out a laugh, and she covers his mouth with hers one more time.

"Next year," she says, "I'm making you dress up as Austin Powers."

Dean groans. "Only if you wear go-go boots. And nothing else."

She smiles. "Go-go boots, definitely. We'll talk about the rest."

Well, Dean supposes. A year can be a long time. Maybe by then he'll finally be used to this, this apple pie life. Maybe by then, this house and this neighborhood will finally start to feel like home.

Lisa pats him on the chest one more time, then burrows down under the covers, her face tucked into the crook of his neck. He brings his arm up to run his fingers along her shoulder, and she lets out a contented sigh.

"Rest up," she says. "Tomorrow we have to start Christmas shopping."

Son of a bitch.

He's so never getting used to all this.

\- end -


End file.
